Good and bad AT prize ships - where do tiamat and hydra belong?

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Good and bad AT prize ships - where do tiamat and hydra belong?

AT ship - what makes it good? There should be some demand for it. Some demand is generated by collectors and people who are interested in something related to the ship, e.g. lore. But most of demand is dictated by the ship’s stats (because people with money to acquire these ships usually play excel online more than they play barbie online). This is further divided into two groups: ship should be good for AT meta or for TQ meta.

For TQ, you need raw power AND risk aversion. Nobody is going to fly ship which is outclassed by t2, and nobody is going to fly 100b+ ship which is easy to lose. For TQ, this translates to flashy appearance with few quick kills. Moracha and imp are two the most notable examples of ships which are good: both are pretty safe to navigate between systems (cloak or 2s align + nullification), are in relatively safe position when fighting on grid (LR web or insane AB speed), and posess decent projected damage.

For AT, with the latest rule revision, it’s raw ship power, unique abilities not present on other ships or ability to work around “1 ship type max” rule. For example: the rabisu and the etana for more power, the victor for unique abilities, the chameleon to work around the 1 ship rule.

Now, to AT16 prize ships, the tiamat and the hydra. First of all, spoolup speed bonus instead of max spoolup bonus is a step into right direction, but it’s not nearly enough. For TQ, they are mostly plagued by their primary weapon system - disintegrators - which is forcing them into brawling range. Also there were some rumors that CCP had to make them weak due to AT balance, which is partially a bad approach.

Hydra: it’s significanly better than the damavik but still quite bad (compared to other AT prize frigs or even some t2 frigs). This is a frigate, AT balance reason for making it weak is plain wrong. With 1 unique OR flagship rule using it makes no sense, you will never take low-impact frigate over almost any unique cruiser. The only frigate which has (almost negligible) chance to appear is malice, even cambion fell off. So, hydra must be balanced for TQ meta, and I see two ways to do it. First - keep it brawling-oriented but pump much more power into it. Insane resistances, good cap regen, high DPS output with relatively short spoolup (below 30-40 seconds). Second way is making it more risk-averse, which is ought to include some insane optimal range bonuses (+200%-ish on top of its present +37.5% bonus).

Tiamat: as it’s a cruiser, AT balance reasons are legit. However, in its current form it’s rather bad for AT and insanely bad for TQ. For AT, it’s basically vedmak with additional med slot, high slot and a bit more stats, which costs you 11 points (it’s recon, not t1 cruiser) and you block yourself from using other uniques which are significantly more useful. For TQ, it’s a ship with very limited range and ability to control engagement with bad stats. Like with the hydra, making it more risk-averse by adding +100% optimal range bonus would help alot. More cap regen would help too, mostly for shield fit which presently has to spend one of its precious mids to fit cap injector.

If the main job of these ships is to deal damage - then to be used on TQ they beg for extra range. AT meta is more brawly, because environment is strict 10x10 with no possible escalations, so range bonuses are valued much less.

Also cloak should not mean that ship should have bad base stats. Presently they are pretty close to pirate ships rather than pimped t2, unlike other (good) AT prize ships. They could be turned into AF and HAC with cloaks, with corresponding increase in base stats - they have no real ewar bonuses after all (despite tiamat belonging to recon class).

As for flavor bonuses which still might be useful for TQ, it could be insanely low starting damage which quickly ramps up to max. For example,it would be cool if Tiamat would start with 0 dps but after 20 seconds of shooting it would have 700-ish dps (assuming 1 damage mod and mystic).

All things considered the current state of the ships is pretty disappointing while there are plenty of opportunities.
They would make so much more sense as HAC/AF class.
Hopefully CCP might consider the ideas and change them a bit.
We feel it would make the ships actually being used instead of gathering dust in someone’s hangar.

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I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on a Tiamat, just so I can take it out Exploring. It does get a Probe bonus, after all. =)

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The prizes were known before the tournament, the teams knew what they competed for, changing the stats after the fact that they have been won would be unfair for the other teams. Collectors will probably want the ships anyway no matter what, you dont hear people complaining about the mimir being in need of a buff for example

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how is an incredibly weak ship being buffed unfair on anyone? and the stats have already been changed, just not enough to make is usable. The stats got changed on the victor last year too and the results turned out great, it sees plenty of use and because of that theres a chance for big shiny killmails. With the tiamat nobody is gonna use it so none will die. Your comment makes no sense to me.

And your wrong about the mimir, anyone that knows what that ship is knows how useless it is and would love to see it buffed.

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What only was known before the tournament, is that the ships would be Triglavian and SOCT themed.
Stats (that eventually make the ship) were only released in the beginning of august.
The tournament was already in its second weekend by then.

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the tourney ships could all use a buff except for a 1 or two. they also should be banned from tournaments as they are to unbalancing. They should represent the pinnacle of combat ability on tq. but also represent a trophy.
basically they should have stats that make you feel invulnerable and like you want to take them out on tq but at incredible risk to reputation and wallet.

the ones most in need of love are the early HACs and Af. So the Mimir, Adrestia, Vangel, Freki, Malice and Utah.
Also the Tourney should be:
The winner gets. 1 BS, 1 Cruiser, 1 Frig per fielded participant.
Second gets 1 Cruiser, 1 Frig per fielded participant
Third gets 1 Frig per fielded participant.

To cut down on isk from investors tipping skill on the field. Basically rich mofos shouldn’t get deals where they fund these teams for ships.

There should also be community prize pool. so the pilots with the highest isk damage to the winning teams over the period gets a copy of the winning teams prizes. (scrutinized by ccp to prevent abuse). So if you happen to be the highest killer with say 105biill of NC kiills over the tourney time frame and NC wins then you win the 1 BS, 1 CRUISER 1 FRIG too. why? because you killed the killers of everyone else. like wise for second and third.

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When Pearl make AT ships avalible for a $ amount to us mere mortals we are gonna have some fantastic pvp opertunity with them.

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pve you mean, have you seen that drone bonus on the chameleon?

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Ooooh good point.

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Wtb Utah

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From what i’ve seen and read, and owning the Pacifier and the Enforcer, i see the Hyrad and Taimat as DED’s attempt to copy that design on the the Precusor frigate and cruiser.
And due to these ships being limited to one specfic turret type, does away with the optional requirements of the other faction skills(eg. Amarr for lasers, Cald for missiles etc…), though maintaining the Precusor ships drone capacity, which the DED Pacifier and Enforcers are missing.

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Love to get my hands on the Hydra and Tiamet. Think of having the ability to get in close enough to have a good turret tracking and well within the turret optimal range. The surprise factor of one of these ships un-cloaking right on top of your target with instant lock and starts ripping them a new one with it’s disintegration turret, and little chance of getting out of range of it’s fully spun-up damage.

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problem is there’s no instant lock. every other at cov ops has instant lock after decloak except for the hydra

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true, but with the right rigs and sensor modules you can counter the 10sec delay of the Covert Ops CD.

the Hydra would be the better of the two, with the 660mm Scan Rez, though it’s no match to the Pacifier’s 800mm. Only ships like the Purifier, Manticore, Nemesis and Hound could bet these ships, only because it has that no targeting delay after de-cloaking.

but those ships have much lower Scan-rez and are bombers at heart, when you look at the Tiamat and Hydra, these are deadly ships if fitted and used wisely. and anyone that has faced the Damavik or Vedmak in a RR mini-fleet knows these are not ships to take lightly, then add in the cloaking and extra damage the Tiamat and Hydra get you have real bad news if they are well trained.

remember the Hydra gets an +10% per lvl of Covert Ops to its max damage multiplier bonus, plus the extra 2.5% above the Damavik’s disintegrator damage bonus per level of frigate skill. that’s a max damage of 200% (without skills, modules) and each cycle max damage increase of 37.5%, so number of cycles to max damage would be reduced. Potential damage with an 272.25dps in Thermal damage and 150.14dps in Explosive damage, that’s @ 422.39dps of combined from a frigate (excluding damage modifier bonus of the turret and not including drone DPS).

so yes they might not get the instant lock, but if they get close enough and get a lock before the target can ( which I think is do able), these ships could be bad news.

I do look forward to seeing how these will be used, and interested in hearing from those that are using them.

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Sit in a hangar since they are not worth it.

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Price vs loose is high just for the standard versions atm. So youre likely to be 100% correct.

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look its just fair to say they should all be banned from the at and given a huge buff so they are the closest thing to “I win” “l337 hax” EVE has. each and everyone should be so lol op and such a huge end game desirable item every single player should covet them

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Please at least give them back the initially planned optimal range bonus, i don’t want to always be forced to commit into a range where cloaky lokis can decloak, web me and potentially tank up to 2 Tiamats dps.

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They both seem a bit eh… lackluster. Is there a chance they can get the instant lock like the other AT cov ops ships?

I’m hoping these get looked at for the winter balance pass.

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I agree. The Tiamat and Hydra should be stronger considering that the Triglavians are a major spotlight in the current expansions.

I think they should be given the decloak targeting bonus to bring them inline with other cov-ops AT ships and a unique bonus to go with the Triglavian theme:

+15% bonus to remote repair amount Received

This would give them something special unseen in the current AT ship lineup.

1 Like